About

Staffrider began in Johannesburg in 1978, two years after the June 16 uprising, at a time when South Africa’s political resistance was growing but much of it was forced underground. Writers, artists, photographers and cultural workers needed a platform that could carry the voices, images and arguments of that moment into public life.

A magazine became the answer.

Published by Ravan Press in Braamfontein, Staffrider emerged from a world where art was not decoration. Art was witness. It carried suffering, joy, anger, beauty, memory and resistance. It gave people a way to speak when ordinary public speech was being watched, restricted or silenced.

The name came from township life. A staffrider was someone who jumped onto or off a moving train, sometimes from necessity, sometimes from daring. In the 1970s, trains were the daily transport of hundreds of thousands of workers moving between townships, factories and cities. They were overcrowded, difficult and dangerous. The boldest riders learned to move with skill and nerve while the train was still moving.

What began as survival became an art form.

For the magazine, the name carried the mood of the time without needing to explain it: we cannot wait for perfect conditions. We are moving now.

From its first issue, Staffrider published poetry, short stories, essays, photography, graphics and political witness from community-based writers and artists. It placed established voices beside unpublished ones. It did not rely only on ordinary bookshops. It moved through writing groups, cultural networks and readers, cheaply and close to the ground.

That closeness gave Staffrider its force. It also made it dangerous. The first issue was banned almost immediately.

Staffrider was never only a magazine. It was a platform in motion: a place where literature, art, memory and resistance travelled together.

The new Staffrider is not trying to recreate the past. It is building from it.

The original Staffrider was born from pressure, urgency and the need for a voice people could actually read. It gave space to those who were writing, photographing, thinking and making from inside the culture, not from a distance. That spirit remains, but the conditions have changed.

Today, the riders move differently.

They move through streets, taxis, campuses, screens, timelines, studios, WhatsApp groups, archives, neighbourhoods, creative scenes and unfinished futures. They are not only riding trains. They are riding ideas, languages, images, rhythms, memories, questions and possibilities.

These are the new Staffriders.

They are writers, poets, artists, photographers, designers, essayists, reviewers, editors, interns, digital storytellers, readers and cultural makers shaping South African culture now.

They are not hustlers.

They are not defined only by survival, grind, transaction or ambition. They are witnesses, makers, thinkers, feelers, readers, rememberers and riders. They create while life is already moving. They question what is accepted. They document what might otherwise disappear. They carry memory without being trapped by nostalgia. They make work from pressure, but they are not reduced by it.

The new Staffriders understand that the personal and political are still intertwined. They know that art can heal, provoke, unsettle, comfort, remember and resist. They work across forms: poetry, photography, music, design, criticism, fiction, performance, film, essays, reviews, visual culture and digital storytelling.

Staffrider is both the platform and the people who move through it.

It is the page, the screen, the archive, the issue, the gathering, the submission, the conversation and the next voice that steps forward.

This is where the new legacy is being shaped.

The destination is not a single place.

It is the culture still being made.

Staffrider’s next chapter is not only about publishing a magazine. It is about creating a platform where memory can move, where new voices can gather, and where the work of writers, poets, artists, photographers, designers, essayists, reviewers, editors, interns, readers and digital storytellers can find form.

The old Staffrider carried voices through print, paper, writing groups, cultural networks and communities that needed to be heard. The new Staffrider carries that spirit through print, web, social media, archives, events, submissions, partnerships and youth development.

The routes have changed.
The need for voice has not.

The print edition anchors the legacy. The website opens the platform. Social media carries the conversation. The archive remembers. Submissions invite new voices in and events gather the community. 

This is how the new legacy is made: not by repeating the past, but by giving today’s cultural makers a place to read, feel, remember and ride.

To ride is to participate.
To ride is to create.
To ride is to risk a voice.
To ride is to carry memory forward.
To ride is to make meaning while life is already in motion.

Staffrider is both the platform and the people who move through it.

The destination is the next voice.
The next image.
The next poem.
The next essay.
The next question.
The next rider.

Staffrider is the new legacy.

Ride!